Ukraine has continued to conduct long-range drone strikes focused on the Moscow region, deep inside Russian territory. Zelensky has touted that he is ramping up the military pressure on Russia, and will force it to the negotiating table to end the war "by winter".
The latest overnight strikes killed at least five people and injured ten when a drone hit an industrial zone near Moscow. Several fires erupted in the aftermath of the attack on the Novoselki industrial zone outside the Russian capital.
Damage in Moscow region, via TelegramMoscow's regional governor Andrey Vorobyov announced on Telegram, "Sadly, there have been fatalities and injuries... I extend my sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of the deceased."
Air defenses were active in the region, and it comes amid a broader Ukrainian campaign targeting Russian industrial zones and manufacturing. According to details in Russian media:
One of the wounded remains in serious condition, with doctors describing the injuries of seven others as moderate, the governor said. Two more people declined hospitalization after being examined by doctors, he added.
The victims sustained shrapnel and blast injuries, fractures, and soft-tissue and chest wounds, Vorobyev wrote.
Fires broke out at several locations in the industrial zone, including at a warehouse, while a power substation and an administrative building were also damaged by drone debris, the governor added.
In the village of Solnyshkovo, a drone damaged a private home and a vehicle, the governor said. No one was injured, he added.
At this point, there are hundreds of drones sent on Russia each night, which Ukraine describes as retaliation for heavy Russian ballistic missile attacks on its cities.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced Tuesday morning that 320 Ukrainian drones were intercepted and destroyed inside Russia in the prior 12 hours across several regions. It has decried these as terror attacks against civilians, including a horrific drone strike on a crowded beach.
It happened Monday at the Black Sea holiday village of Arkhipo-Osipovka, Gelendzhik resort area:
The beach was packed, many vacationers lounging near the turquoise waters when the drone slammed into the white sand and burst into a fireball.
Russian officials said seven people, including three children, were killed and 58 others injured by the explosion in the Black Sea resort town of Gelendzhik on Monday. The explosion was captured on video and shared on social media, and verified by NBC News.
The civilian death toll has been mounting. Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik said a total of 49 civilians have been killed and more than 340 others wounded in Ukrainian attacks inside Russia over just the past week.
Russian officials say air defenses repelled a drone attack on the Moscow region, Authorities say five people were killed and 10 injured as fires broke out in an industrial area in Chekhov district.
Emergency crews remain at affected sites as authorities monitor further drones. pic.twitter.com/J9lyUHHsAu
Ukrainian civilians have also continued to suffer, with Russian attacks having killed three people in Sumy in the country's northeast, the head of the regional military administration said Tuesday.
"Two children and an elderly woman were killed in Russian (guided aerial bomb) strikes on Sumy tonight," Oleg Grygorov said on Telegram. "The girls were 5 and 10 years old. The children's bodies were recovered from under the rubble of their house," he described after six guided aerial bombs struck the city.
Tyler Durden Tue, 08/04/2026 - 10:20Despite the latest Manufacturing PMI surging to four year highs, US Factory Orders unexpectedly dropped in June (-0.3% MoM vs +0.2% MoM expected). This is the second monthly decline in the headline print in a row, but orders remain up 7.4% YoY...
Source: Bloomberg
Worse still, Core Factory Orders (excluding Transports), dropped 0.4% MoM (dramatically missing expectations of a 0.4% MoM rise). This is the first monthly drop since October and biggest MoM decline since April 2025...
Source: Bloomberg
Orders Ex-Defense also tumbled 0.4% MoM, down for the second month in a row.
So while the soft survey data is positive, the hard data is deteriorating.
The reason for that is a familiar one in this bifurcated economy, as we showed from ISM's respondents...
Green ones from AI, semiconductor, electronics and machinery firms report strong demand from AI data centers, chips and defense.
Red ones from metals, transportation, chemicals and consumer-related sectors report weak demand, tariffs, higher costs, geopolitical risks and pricing chaos.
Simply put, the AI supply chain is booming, Defense is enthused; the rest is not.
Tyler Durden Tue, 08/04/2026 - 10:15Bitdeer Technologies Group (NASDAQ: BTDR) announced Aug. 4 that it has executed a 16-year colocation lease and services agreement for 121 IT megawatts at its Tydal, Norway campus, representing roughly $4.7 billion in contracted payments, with a renewal option that takes the potential total to $8.0 billion over 24 years. The announcement sent shares about 14% higher premarket.
The tenant is Volta Tydal AS, a subsidiary of Volta Infra Holdings, an AI infrastructure platform that emerged the same morning with $300 million in venture funding at a $2.4 billion valuation, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Altimeter Capital, with NVIDIA and Michael Dell participating. Dell Technologies is the technology provider at Tydal. Volta's end customer is an unnamed leading AI lab.
Bitdeer has turned an idle bitcoin mining campus into long-dated contracted revenue backed by bank credit, and it issued no equity and no warrants to do it.
Who does what Layer Party Role End customer Unnamed AI lab Buys compute. Contracted ~$10B over six years with Volta. Operator / tenant Volta Buys the NVIDIA GPUs (Dell supplies the hardware), owns and operates the compute, sells capacity to the lab. Pays Bitdeer rent. Landlord Bitdeer Owns the land, building, grid connection, power and cooling. Delivers 121 IT MW fitted to NVIDIA spec. Collects rent and service fees. Credit J.P. Morgan + one other global bank Issue ~$1.3B of letters of credit standing behind Volta's rent obligations.Bitdeer is the landlord, not the compute operator. It does not buy or own the GPUs, so it carries no chip-obsolescence risk and no refresh cycle. It does not have to find AI customers. Under the modified gross structure it does not carry the electricity cost either, which Volta reimburses on a pass-through basis.
Bitdeer Tydal campus The terms Item Detail Contracted IT load 121 IT MW (~133 gross MW) Base term 16 years, plus one 8-year renewal option Contracted payments ~$4.7B base term; ~$8.0B with renewal Rate ~$202/kW/month average, modified gross; power reimbursed Escalators Contracted rate rises 3% a year, compounding, on both lease and services Revenue per IT MW ~$2.4M/year NOI margin (est.) ~90% Credit support ~$1.3B in letters of credit (J.P. Morgan affiliates + one other bank) Remaining capex ~$500M (~$4.0M per IT MW) Equity or warrants issued None Campus ownership retained 100% Delivery Phase 1 by Dec. 31, 2026; Phase 2 by Mar. 31, 2027 Tenant termination right No-fee exit at year 10One line in that table needs unpacking. The 3% escalator means the rent does not stay flat. The contracted rate rises 3% every year and compounds, on the services fees as well as the base rent. So the $202/kW/month Bitdeer discloses is an average across all 16 years: the opening rate sits below it and the final-year rate well above. That is standard in long-dated data center leases, and it is why the headline total is far larger than 16 times the first year's rent.
The rate is the best in the sectorAt $202/kW/month, Tydal prices at the top of the disclosed range for miner-to-AI conversions:
Deal Term Capacity Contracted value $/kW/mo Bitdeer / Volta (Tydal) 16 yr 121 IT MW $4.7B ~$202 (disclosed) TeraWulf / Anthropic (Hawesville) 20 yr ~401 MW ~$19B ~$197 (calculated) Hut 8 (Texas) 15 yr 352 MW $9.8B ~$155 (calculated) Cipher / Fluidstack (Barber Lake) 10 yr 168 IT MW ~$3B ~$149 (calculated) Cipher / AWS (Black Pearl) 15 yr 216 IT MW ~$5.5B ~$142 (calculated)Bitdeer's $202 is stated in its Aug. 4 release as a 16-year average rate. Peer figures are ZH calculations from disclosed contract totals, terms and capacity.
So...
Bitdeer is selling services, not just space. This is a lease and services agreement, meaning Bitdeer operates the facility rather than simply renting it out. That is higher-margin and harder to displace than pure triple-net landlording, and it earns a rate to match. It also means the 3% escalator compounds on two revenue lines instead of one.
Norway prices above West Texas. European colocation commands a structural premium, and Tydal offers things the Permian Basin cannot: dual grid connectivity, local hydropower, an estimated PUE of approximately 1.1, and a carbon profile that matters to European customers and to an AI lab facing scrutiny on emissions.
"This project will incorporate leading-edge NVIDIA GPU technology and frontier models from a leading AI lab into a data center that is powered exclusively through highly reliable, carbon-free energy sources," said Bitdeer CFO Michael G. Potter.
Never Gonna Give You UpEvery converting miner faces the same problem - the tenants writing multi-billion-dollar AI checks are frequently young, private and unrated. Until that is solved, a signed lease is not something a bank will lend against. Bitdeer's competitors have solved it by selling equity:
Cipher's Fluidstack lease at Barber Lake carries a Google backstop covering $1.4 billion of obligations. Google took warrants for roughly 24 million shares, about 5.4% of Cipher pro forma. TeraWulf's arrangements gave Google a stake of roughly 14%. Both companies bought their credit support with permanent dilution, at share prices set before the stocks re-rated.
Bitdeer got $1.3 billion of institutional credit support and issued nothing at all.
Moreover, the letters of credit are bank obligations, not tenant obligations. If Volta defaults, Bitdeer draws on J.P. Morgan and a second global institution rather than pursuing a private holding company through Norwegian courts. That $1.3 billion covers roughly five and a half years of early-term rent, and Bitdeer can terminate outright if Volta misses the credit-backstop milestones, a walk-away option most of its peers did not negotiate.
Bitdeer affiliates also retain 100% ownership of the campus, with no JV, no partial sale and no promote to a capital partner. Cipher formed a JV for its 1 GW Colchis site. TeraWulf sold its 50.1% Abernathy stake. Bitdeer kept the whole thing.
Bitdeer also intends to raise additional debt against Tydal, and expects the project financing to generate significant excess capital for other AI and HPC projects. Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Northland advised on the transaction, and leading institutions have been engaged for the financing. This is where the credit package pays off a second time. Contracted cash flows plus a bank-issued backstop is what makes a project financeable well inside what Bitdeer's corporate credit would command. Cipher priced senior secured notes at 7.125% on the strength of its Google backstop. Against only $500 million of remaining capex on a campus already energized and consented from its mining life, an over-raise is plausible.
Bitdeer also retains 47 gross MW of additional Tydal capacity, targeted for the second half of 2027 and outside this lease. It now has a marquee proof point and a live NVIDIA-spec campus with which to market it.
Tyler Durden Tue, 08/04/2026 - 09:55The Trump administration is preparing to slap import bans on Chinese optical transceivers, targeting a critical component for US data centers as White House officials seek to protect infrastructure supporting the AI boom from Chinese espionage, Reuters reported.
These small, pluggable connectors convert electrical signals from servers, switches, and AI chip stacks into light for transmission over fiber-optic cables, then convert the light back into electrical data at the other end. Because these modules are critical to data centers, Chinese-made transceivers could potentially allow Chinese firms to steal data, install malware, or disrupt services at US facilities.
Sources told the outlet that the Federal Communications Commission is drafting import restrictions on Chinese optical transceivers, which could take effect this year.
"Transceivers definitely pose a risk," said Divyansh Kaushik, an AI policy expert at the Washington, D.C.-based advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies. "As the data center buildout scales up, you want to make sure the data center supply chain is secure from the outset," he added.
The restrictions would affect Zhongji Innolight, which controls about 27% of the global data center transceiver market and was recently added to a Pentagon list of companies allegedly linked to China's military.
Meanwhile, U.S. manufacturers Coherent and Lumentum could benefit significantly from the measure. Coherent shares are up 18% in premarket trading, while Lumentum shares are up 14%. Applied Optoelectronics is also up 18%.
However, as Reuters noted, those U.S. companies "lack the scale to replace Chinese suppliers immediately."
Read Goldman’s trading desk take on optical networking and transceiver stocks.
Tyler Durden Tue, 08/04/2026 - 09:40